Digital Nation

I just finished watching Digital Nation. Everything Frontline does is such high quality. I thought this was such an interesting program, I did not mind the length of it. Though it hooked me more as a parent then a future teacher I must confess. I am maddened by parents who watch their kids playing video games all day....like examples shown in Japan and Korea. We have to take responsibility for our kids, we are not here to be their best friends. We are here to guide them, get them outdoors and engaged in other things, and to say no sometimes. I do think video games are addictions. We just came home from vacation at a beautiful resort in the Dominician Republic. I saw teens playing video games all the time in the teen hangout room....and could not believe it. This resort had every outdoor activity you could think of. It's very sad. One parent I met said her son is addicted to Warcraft...shown in this video. I had no idea what is was, was interested to see it after just hearing about it. It's seductive for sure. 2nd Life Creator Rosedale is drinking his own KoolAid if you ask me. My prefered name for 2nd life is "get a life". But maybe because I'm 45 years old. Finally the Army Experience Centers I find very objectionable and if one opened up here, I'd be a protestor! I liked the final conclusion that we should use and learn from technology, but always ask "what is it doing to us" and find a balance. An analogy came to me....I just watched the video "Food Inc." a few weeks ago. When large scale farming evolved, it did so without malice intent. We are just seeing negative effects from using pesticides, corn subsidies, large scale meat production etc. It took decades to see negative effects. I believe we are at the beginnings of the same thing with information expolsion. There can be positives, but let's not wait decades to realize negative effects. Stop each day and make careful balanced decisions, and pass those values down to your children and students in your classroom.